Posted on 04/12/2010 3:34:32 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
20 some years ago, Florida Legislation created the "School Advisory Councils" to run schools locally by parents, community businesses and members, students, and school teachers and staff (not just the principals). Their task was to write the annual "School Improvement Plan" (SIP) - a living, changing document that describes the school locally (as a local, small entity versus the BIG incomprehensible system) AND the school budget.
The SIP was to make annual adjustments to the curricular and cultural (safety, etc) components of the school by the local experts (named above).
The budget was to be developed to enact the SIP.
The task of educating the children of our community was to be shared between all stakeholders. School Advisory Councils (SACs) were the instrument by which “the whole village” was “to raise the child.”
Current legislation proposed by Florida Senator Thrasher (SB 6) and passed by the Florida Senate last Wednesday and embodied in HB7189 essentially isolates the teachers and principals of schools as the primary parties responsible for a child’s education.
SB 6/HB7189's ridiculous implication is that the parents, community, and students themselves identified in the earlier legislation establishing SACs have little to do with a child's progress.
SB6/HB7189 suggests that if teacher and principal salaries are threatened, teachers will somehow find a magic bullet that parents, teachers and administrators together have not been able to find.
By threatening to raise the taxes of the individual communities who resist this legislation, the Senators avoid blame for the consequences of this radical change, shifting their blame to the individual School Boards. The Senate bill essentially holds a loaded economic gun to the heads of our communities – “Do this, or pay.”
SB 6/HB7189 is an admission of the failure of both the state and the local school districts for making much of the provision for the SACs that would have, could have, turned schools around.
Perhaps the school districts were as mum as the law would allow them to be for reluctance of giving up central control of the schools. Poorly advertised – SACs are poorly attended and SIP's are no more than statistical tables of FCAT data only an actuary could appreciate.
SB 6/HB7189 is an admission of our failure as community members and parents for not showing up at the SAC meetings that, in spite of this poor advertisement, still convened.
Teachers and students have been left to themselves to teach/learn the burgeoning body of information, skills and values necessary to become a functional part of society.
Rather than participate in this process, society has gone so far as to undermine it by providing children with sundry digital toys and virtual reality escape vehicles – video games, internet access, hundreds of cable channels, iPods and cell phones - to both appease the adults' guilty conscience for neglecting children and of necessity - to babysit their children.
Institutional education won't "work" with clients that are so preoccupied that they will not study or discipline themselves - outside the classroom and now even in the classroom.
Lawmakers either do not understand the breakdown that I have described above or don't want to address it.
SB 6/HB7189 fails to address the problem.
Rather than bring attention back to the community as the SAC legislation did, back to the failure of our communities to prepare and present students ready for education on a DAILY basis - a failure that has produced the reality of distracted, unmotivated, defiant, truant, disrespectful and disruptive students - SB 6/HB7189 ignores the many factors that interfere with a teacher’s ability to instruct, assess, and assign appropriate grades.
In a tight economic climate and system where votes are bought by services provided, institutional education suffering from such socially rooted and complex problems is a losing proposition.
It is being systematically deconstructed and reassigned to private vendors to shift responsibility away from the government.
In Florida , this is facilitated by the fact that we have a majority conservative legislation whose leaning toward privatization is congruent with this effort.
Make no mistake, this bill, SB 6/HB7189, will no more fix public education than telling a drowning man to swim will save him.
What SB 6/HB7189 will do is first drive talented and in-demand teachers to other venues for their livelihood. Second, it will further villainize children who are rejecting as irrelevant the narrow curriculum and 1 dimensional assessments that are being tightened like nooses around the children’s and educator’s necks. We have already seen this happen with the implementation of FCAT – rather than addressing the issues that cause students to disengage, we find it more convenient to label them as criminals and to exit them from the classroom to the halls and from the school building to the streets.
The economic forces SB 6/HB7189 will impose will redefine “good” and “bad” in terms of success at testing. Any student who threatens the economic status of an educator will be exited from the system.
Our criminal population will swell.
The solution to our students’ rejection of institutional education is not SB 6/HB7189. SB 6/HB7189 needs to be vetoed this week by the Governorbefore irrevocable harm is done to the already strained local schools.
The real issues of student learning as affected by all segments of the local community must be addressed – and this through the vehicle that decades of legislation has established but that practice has ignored – the School Advisory Councils. The answer lies in convening town hall meetings on the small scale at each local school’s School Advisory Council. The answer is in you and I waking up tomorrow morning and saying “I’m going to make my community’s school a safe and healthy learning environment.” Then attending the next SAC meeting…and the next…
SB 6/HB7189 merely does what we in our communities have done for too long – shift the blame to others. Here it shifts it further from the community to solely the educators.
These are our children and they can learn, if we will not only encourage them to, but hand in hand with our neighbors, provide for them and require them to respectfully attend school, go to class, listen and participate, then return to loving and secure homes to study.
If students were treated the way they were 40 years ago your job would much less stressful and “easier”.
Would it not?
O-M-G Truer words were never spoken! I am a product of the Miami Dade Public Schools. When I was a kid, if you mouthed off to a teacher you got paddled by the principal or a coach almost on the spot. You raised your hand in class and then STOOD beside your desk to identify yourself and make your POLITE comment. But then, when I was really little, I remember praying to Jesus Christ before school and after saying the pledge. So they tossed GOD out of the classroom. What happened? The grades went down and the crime went up. Thank you SO much Madelyn Murray O'Hare! Thank you pos liberals!
I disagree. Everyone who has to work in the private sector (of course there are exceptions) has to exhibit performance or face job loss.
Teachers ought to be the same way.
I agree parents need to be more involved. In fact, parents are the most important influence. But we cannot legislate moral parents. We CAN legislate rules for teachers, and we should.
One other option that would help: vouchers for parents to send their kids to schools that work. Make schools compete for students. Of course the unions oppose that too.
Another thing: encourage home schooling. Let parents who homeschool get a tax break. And teacher unions would oppose that as well.
Tenure is a bad idea. It encourages laziness.
Because schooling is an entitlement.
Those not interested in getting with the program should be booted.
Where do you suppose this entitlement status came from?
Your union, among others.
So, don't b!tch about the state of schools today unless you're willing to b!tch about the role your union played in making it so.
This is just reason #142 why public schools are failures, and will get worse.
Your co-worker is an idiot. He can file charges all by his widdle lonesome. It only takes a trip to a Courthouse to swear out a complaing.
L
The union really hates me, too. But they must protect me and I make them do so. The Republican presence in the Miami Dade County School system is fairly large, perhaps 30% of the 24,000 overall employee numbers. So much so that years ago, a Republican coalition was formed to go and lobby legislators in Tallahassee on educational issues. It was very effective too. Until this bill came up. Then it was rushed through, much like Health Care was rammed down our throats in DC, before anybody could react.
First off, that's tough to do from a hospital bed with your jaw wired shut and high on painkillers. Second it's a little bit late since the system is already in high gear for the actual attack. Third, this gentleman was pure sheep. I knew him just casually but he was a really nice, calm and unassuming gentleman who will probably suffer from PTSD for the rest of his natural life. He never returned to my school following his ordeal. Too scared. My students promptly asked me if I was too scared to come to work. I answered them thusly: Look, son. I'm too young to die and too old to take an A$$ whuppin' so.... I'm just gonna KILL YA. Their eyes always get the size of dinner plates and they whisper: Yeah, we sorta figured you'd say something like that. I never have problems like this. I still treat my students exactly like I treated my troops when I was on active duty as an army officer. It seems to work very well.
In most Jurisdictions one can file charges any time as long as the Statute of Limitations hasn't come into play. This is a BS excuse for not acting.
Second it's a little bit late since the system is already in high gear for the actual attack
There's absolutely no legal reason he can't file actions on his own both Civilly and Criminally.
He never returned to my school following his ordeal. Too scared.
In other words, a p****.
I still treat my students exactly like I treated my troops when I was on active duty as an army officer.
You make them do pushups till their butts suck buttermilk?
ROFLMAO! I about spewed my coffee all over my keyboard just now thru my nose. That was funny. No, that stuff happens to trainees in bootcamp. I was in a line outfit and we had to be ready to deploy. Fast. I lost buddies in Grenada, Panama and Somalia. In fact I had buddies killed during stateside TRAINING exercises. It's a dangerous line of work. I treated my troops firmly but with respect. I do the same with my students.
But actually, years ago, I did use to make my high school students do pushups when they were late to class. The athletes and JROTC especially. Anybody that age can do 25 pushups without breaking a sweat. But I'd add 5 more for each additional tardy and sometimes I'd make them put their feet on my desk and do them ranger style (elevated). Sometimes, I'd even get down and do the pushups WITH the kids which was great because it showed them I was in half decent shape, too. That hasn't happened for the last 10 years but I could do it now, after my gastric bypass last summer and now having lost 130 pounds of fat. I'm about the size I was in the army.
Anyway, after awhile, I'd hear them smashing down the hall like they're trying to break the opposing line and screaming: "I gotta make it or it's 150 with my feet up! and they'd DIVE thru my door as the bell rang. After awhile that got to be hazardous to other students in the halls so I relegated that joy to the coaches or JROTC since those were the most flagrant offenders. Young ladies would often just have to stand next to their desks. Doesn't sound too tough but standing in HEELS for 90 min can get painful. That worked for years but when parents started to complain I read the liberal writing on the wall and stopped completely.
These days I just show them my military photo album or I give them a youtube link to the videos I upload of my IDPA Shooting matches. Sometimes I give them a link of one of my AIKIDO classes I have filmed. That's pretty convincing evidence that this is a teacher you don't really want to mess with. Oh and the teacher attacked last year IS suing. He's suing the school for not having any security available on the floors after school. That situation has now been corrected so if I stay late to grade as I usually do, there is at least some security around. Not that I really need it myself, but there are other teachers who do. The kid and parents who were the attackers were arrested but I don't know the outcomes. It's only a 3rd degree felony to attack a teacher so probably not a whole lot. Hardly worth the effort to sue them, they don't have anything to take as punishment.
Don't I know it brother. Stay safe.
Semper Fi.
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